Texas Redistricting Dispute Returns to San Antonio Judges
January 28, 2012, 7:08 AM ESTBy Laurel Brubaker Calkins
(Updates with court’s request in third paragraph.)
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The Texas redistricting dispute is back in federal court in San Antonio, where three U.S. judges are seeking a compromise that can help them re-draw voter maps in time to keep the state’s 2012 elections on schedule.
Lawyers for Latino voting rights activists, the state attorney general, Texas lawmakers, election officials and political party leaders today are continuing a redistricting debate that has already gone before the U.S. Supreme Court.
County governments say they can’t afford multiple primaries, which might also suppress voter turnout. The judges have asked the parties to discuss possible compromise boundaries and consider whether the state can reimburse local governments for the cost of holding multiple primary elections.
The dispute is over whether new voter maps created by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature last year were intentionally designed to keep Latinos from being elected. State lawmakers contend they didn’t discriminate and were legally allowed to draw districts that favored the election of Republicans.
The San Antonio court is considering splitting Texas’s primaries, holding the presidential primary April 3 and all other state and local primaries later, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia said in a Jan. 23 order.
Split Primary
Unless new voting district maps are approved within about a week, Texas election officials say, the primaries must be delayed or split, as counties won’t have time to rearrange precincts, create voter registration cards and mail absentee and military ballots as required by law.
The San Antonio court has ordered all parties in the dispute to submit whatever boundaries they can agree on by Feb. 6 so new maps can be drawn up in time to preserve the unified primary date.
Texas was required to create new voter boundaries after gaining four congressional seats to accommodate almost 4.3 million new residents since 2000, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. About 65 percent of the state’s population growth came from Hispanics, who have historically voted more often for Democrats than Republicans.
After Texas Governor Rick Perry approved the legislature’s maps last July, Latino voter activists and lawmakers whose jobs were threatened sued in San Antonio federal court, saying the maps violated the Voting Rights Act.
Seeking Pre-Clearance
Texas sued in district court in Washington seeking so- called pre-clearance of its maps. Pre-clearance is required of all states with a history of voting rights violations. Texas can’t implement its new election boundaries without this approval from either a Washington federal court or the U.S. Justice Department.
To avoid election delays while it considers pre-clearance, the Washington court asked the three-judge San Antonio panel last year to draw temporary voter maps for the election cycle. The Texas panel released interim boundaries in November after taking testimony in a two-week trial. The court also postponed the state’s primary elections from March 6 to April 3 to allow candidates time to assess the lines.
Texas appealed the San Antonio judges’ maps to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court rejected the court-created maps as not deferential enough to the legislature’s maps. The justices ordered the San Antonio judges to try again, using the lawmakers’ maps as a starting point.
The Washington court hasn’t ruled on pre-clearance. That court is scheduled to conclude a two-week trial next week, and the San Antonio judges asked the Washington judges to expedite their ruling to guide the Texas panel’s redistricting efforts.
The Texas case is Perez v. Perry, 5:11-cv-00360, U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas (San Antonio). The Washington case is Texas v. U.S., 1:11-cv-1303, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
For Related New and Information: Texas and politics: {TNI TX POL BN <GO>} Rick Perry: {NI ?1915847 BN <GO>} Legal headlines: {TLAW <GO>} Bloomberg legal resources: {BLAW <GO>}
--Editors: Andrew Dunn, Michael Hytha
To contact the reporter on this story: Laurel Brubaker Calkins in San Antonio at laurel@calkins.us.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net.
